Dow, S&P dip late in the day while Nasdaq ekes out gain

The market took a recess Friday from the Fed rally.

Stocks have been pushing higher for weeks, not because investors think the economy is healed but because of expectations, then confirmation, that the Federal Reserve would step in and try to fix it.

Most of Friday seemed like another day in the Fed rally, which began in earnest early this month, until stocks slipped in the late afternoon. The Dow Jones industrial average rose as much as 50 points before falling into the red in the last half-hour of trading. It’s just the fourth day in September that the Dow hasn’t managed a gain.

Still, the declines were small. The Dow lost 17.46 points, or 0.1 percent, to 13,579.47. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell in the final minutes of trading, closing down a minuscule 0.11 point, or 0.01 percent, to 1,460.15.

The other main index, the Nasdaq composite, rose four points, or 0.1 percent, to 3,179.96.

Despite the Friday blip, stocks are still much higher than might be expected for such a morose economy. This month, the Dow and the S&P started trading at levels not seen since December 2007, nine months before the fall of Lehman Brothers investment bank. Since the start of June, the Dow has popped nearly 1,200 points.

Universal Music gets EU’s OK to buy EMI, with concessions

Universal Music Group won approval Friday from American and European regulators to buy the famed British music company EMI, including the hugely lucrative Beatles catalogue. The deal will extend its lead as the world’s largest producer of recorded music.

But the EU imposed stringent restrictions and is forcing Universal to sell some of EMI’s biggest acts, including Coldplay, David Guetta and Pink Floyd.

The concessions were a bitter pill for Universal, which will pay $1.9 billion for the entire package. It will then have to turn around and sell the rights to many of the artists it acquired. It will hold an auction, hoping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in a process expected to take another six to nine months to complete. Already 22 bidders have lined up to buy those assets, including the No. 2 and No. 3 music groups, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified because the process is confidential.

Blackberry-maker says it’s sorry for service disruption

The chief executive of struggling BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion apologized Friday after an outage in Europe and Africa interrupted service for customers on the very day Apple Inc. released its new iPhone 5.

RIM announced the issues in postings on Facebook and Twitter on Friday, and later said it resolved the issue. The service disruption lasted up to three hours for some BlackBerry users.

The outage brought up unpleasant memories of last year’s troubles with emails and chat messages that left many users bereft for up to three days.

RIM shares plunged 6.5 percent, or 45 cents, to $6.45  on the Nasdaq.

– From news service reports